1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward the field of tracking information, and more particularly to a universal tracking system.
2. Art Background
With the widespread use of computers, databases have become an important part of storing and accessing information for businesses and organizations. In general, databases are used to store all types of information pertaining to a variety of subjects. One type of database is a relational database. Relational databases have become the preferred way of storing data, particularly in applications that are large and complex. In general, relational databases consist of storing information in tables. Relational databases further provide a means, using queries, to relate different tables to extract desired information. Database tables consist of columns, typically associated with a field or variable, and rows, or records, that include specific data for the columns of the table.
Many applications, which use databases to store information, involve relating or tracking between one or more records of the database. For example, a database may consist of land parcel transactions that occur in a particular jurisdiction. For this example, each record identifies a parcel, a grantor of the parcel (i.e., the person/entity selling the parcel), and a grantee of the parcel (i.e., the person/entity buying the parcel). Typically, information for each land parcel transaction is entered at the time of the transaction. Thus, for this example application, the database contains records for each transaction; however, the records are not related to one another. It is desirable to provide a means to efficiently relate one or more records in a database. For example, in the land parcel transaction application, it is desirable to track ownership of a parcel to determine the chain of owners throughout history of the parcel.
One prior art method of tracking relationships among records involves assigning a tracking number to each record. Typically, for this application, the tracking number is the primary key that identifies a relational database table. The tracking number, generated for each record, typically consists of a single fixed length field. For example, the tracking number may include a single field 8-12 digits in length. Database records are then augmented to include the tracking number. To implement a tracking application, a computer program parses the tracking number to format the tracking number into a meaningful manner (e.g., ascribe meanings to digits of the tracking number). For the land parcel trsaction example, to parse a twelve digit tracking number, a computer program may read the first three digits to determine a year of the land conveyance. The next nine digits are then read by the computer program to determine an identification of the parcel. As shown by this example, a computer program or parsing procedure is required to determine what the digits or fields in a tracking number mean. When the pre-parsing or formatting occurs during run time, the performance of the system is degraded substantially. Accordingly, it is one object of the present invention to minimize the processing required to format or parse fields for tracking applications.